Not every door opens into a future—but sometimes, it leads to something that was waiting to be remembered.

  I didn’t mean to get lost. I was just trying to get warm.

  The rain had started halfway through my walk home—spring rain, sudden and confident, soaking through my jacket in seconds. The nearest shelter was a narrow alley lined with old stone and silence. I ducked under an archway and found a door. Heavy oak, slightly ajar.

  It didn’t occur to me that it hadn’t been there before.

  My name is Eleanor, though most people just call me Elle. I’m twenty-six, between apartments, between relationships, between decisions. I’ve been floating lately, in that strange space where you start to wonder if you’re missing something, or if you’ve already missed it.

  The door creaked when I stepped inside. Behind me, the world faded into hush.

  ***

  The room was long and round, like the inside of a lantern. Glass walls arched overhead, beaded with water that shimmered in soft amber light. It smelled like old roses and cedar, like something you’d only remember once you’d already lost it.

  In the center, seated by an oil lamp at a carved wooden desk, was a man.

  He didn’t look up at first. His hair was dark gold, tied back loosely. He wore a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, ink staining the side of his hand. His presence filled the space quietly, like a line of music without lyrics.

  When he looked at me, his eyes were the color of smoke after rain.

  “You’re earlier than expected,” he said.

  I blinked. “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet.” He stood and smiled, gently. “But I think you’re here to remember something.”

  He offered me a seat across from him. The chair was warm, though no fire burned. The desk between us held paper, a silver inkwell, and a small glass globe that pulsed faintly with light.

  He extended a hand. “I’m James.”

  “Eleanor,” I said. “But I go by Elle.”

  “Elle,” he echoed. “Yes. That fits.”

  For a moment, we just watched the rain trickle across the glass. The light of the lamp flickered, casting soft gold shadows. Something about this place curled inside me—familiar in a way I couldn’t place. Like the feeling of waking from a dream that had your name in it.

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  James traced a circle on the desk with one finger. “Do you know what Verity House is?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a place that holds what people almost became,” he said. “All the versions of us that could’ve existed if something had gone a little differently.”

  I laughed, quietly. “You mean regrets.”

  “No,” he said gently. “Possibilities.”

  He slid a folded piece of paper toward me. I opened it.

  It was a letter. In my handwriting. My actual handwriting—down to the tilt of the t’s and the way I forgot to loop the g’s.

  Dear version of me who stayed,

  I hope it was enough. I hope it was gentle.

  My heart clenched.

  “I never wrote this,” I said.

  “You almost did,” James replied. “It came through with you.”

  I looked up. “And what about you? What version are you?”

  He hesitated. “The one you might’ve met if you’d stopped for five more minutes at that café on Third Street.”

  My breath caught. “You were there?”

  “Not exactly. But I was… near. You left. I stayed.”

  The air thickened around us—not heavy, but intimate. The space between our hands seemed suddenly precious.

  “You remember me,” I said.

  “I remember a possibility,” he said. “But you—this you—are new. And still familiar.”

  We sat in silence, listening to the soft hum of glass remembering the rain. The globe on the desk pulsed gently, casting light across his face. He looked tired. Not physically—soul-tired. The kind that comes from waiting for something you don’t have the right to ask for.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said. “Even if I didn’t know your name.”

  The rain began to slow.

  “I can’t stay, can I?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Verity House only opens when the air between moments gets thin. You’ll wake soon.”

  I felt it already—time coalescing like breath on a windowpane. My body remembering gravity.

  I stood. He did too.

  “Will I see you again?”

  He smiled, and for a second, his sorrow softened.

  “If you choose the life that looks back,” he said, “I’ll be waiting.”

  Then he reached out—not boldly, but with the kind of certainty that comes from being alone too long. His fingers brushed my cheek. Warm, steady.

  “Elle,” he said softly. “Promise me you’ll write something. Anything. Even just your own name.”

  “I will,” I whispered.

  When I stepped back through the door, the rain had stopped.

  I was in the alley again, but it felt different. The archway was gone. Just stone and street and the distant hiss of tires on wet pavement.

  In my hand was the letter. Still folded.

  And in my chest, something blooming—quiet, bittersweet, and real.